Demon Play, Demon Out
by thepsychonaut
Summary: John and Sherlock decide to take an unusual new case in a small town, which several people are convinced is the site of demonic occurrences. Neither is a believer, but when they leave, something returns with them to 221B that isn't Sherlock. John, left to his own devices in the realm of the supernatural, must save the life of his friend, and their relationship is changed forever.
1. Chapter 1

((Are we considering this a crossover or not? The story is based more on theological material, and there are bits and pieces from all kinds of literature, but if imagining it in the world of Supernatural makes it more vivid for you, feel free. Enjoy!))

**Chapter One:**

No crime scene could compare to the days when Sherlock Holmes sought out a new case. They brought just as much confusion, discomfort and frustration, if not more – as much for John Watson as they did for all the prospective clients that flowed through the door of 221B Baker Street.

Sherlock, with all his pitiless indifference, was the primary reason for this. As John had come to accept, he had no sympathy for the people who brought their invariably dull problems to him for solving. Sherlock refused to be bored by a case that he himself was at liberty to choose, which was why he insisted on being so infuriatingly particular.

And the man wondered why they never had a case.

This same situation was predictably playing itself out yet again on a clear, grey Saturday morning, and John had begun to feel that same growing exasperation barely an hour in. A long line of people had come and gone like suitors, each one more uninteresting to Sherlock than the last.

"I've begun to suspect that the new housekeeper has been stealing from me," a large, tight-lipped woman in a tweed jacket had said, crossing her legs primly on the chair. "I can't be certain–"

"Your lack of observation is a pity. I would remedy that, otherwise between her and your last two husbands, you'll be robbed blind," Sherlock had replied briskly, and sent her off in a pout.

"It's the strangest think, I'll tell you," said a man with violently red curls and an expensive suit. "Every time I buy a new pair of cufflinks, they're gone by morning. I can't think what it might be."

"Take your daughter to a doctor straight away," Sherlock answered, after a brief moment of tacit consideration. "And be sure to stop leaving little shiny things around a child next time."

It had gone on in this way, back and forth, for at least two hours, and Sherlock was getting increasingly frustrated. As the last rejected client slunk back out the front door of the flat, he whirled around to face John, who sat with his laptop at the desk, with gritted teeth.

"That's fourteen, John," he said in a clipped voice.

"Fourteen, hmm," John repeated vaguely, glancing back down at the screen. He was determined to let Sherlock manage the problem on his own, as he was the one who'd created it in the first place.

"Fourteen!" Sherlock turned, striding across the room to the kitchen, and then turned back. He was wringing his hands, positively vibrating with idle energy and impatience. "Fourteen people who don't have the common sense to understand a simple explanation on their own. They all know when a cufflink is missing or a wife is acting strange, but will they actually take a moment to put minimal thought into considering an answer that they already know is true? No, of course not." He stared at John accusingly, his jaw set. "Why would they all rather pay a person to think for them when they could do it on their own?"

"Well, they can't, can they?" John pointed out, raising a cooling cup of tea to his mouth. "That's what keeps us in business, isn't it?"

"But they're so _simple_!" Sherlock hissed, raking both hands back through his dark curls. "Stupid, boring little problems that only take a moment's thought! And they won't just consider the facts–"

"They're only stupid little problems to _you_, Sherlock," John interrupted patiently. He'd heard this diatribe countless times before – each time Sherlock went looking for cases, and many times in between. "That's why they come to you. Us. Not everyone can think of the simple explanations."

Sherlock heaved an annoyed sigh, but his slim shoulders slumped, and John knew that he had no more ammunition with which to carry on the argument. He opened his mouth to offer some sort of reassurance that they would find a good case soon, that Sherlock needed to calm down, but before he had a chance to speak there was a brisk knock at the door.

Sherlock's head snapped around like he'd heard a gunshot, and his whole body tensed. "Door's open," he called, and flicked a grin of triumph over toward John. John rolled his eyes, but he secretly enjoyed seeing how animated Sherlock could get over the prospect of a case. Little else ever had that effect on him.

The door opened, and a young woman stepped into the flat. She was spindly and gently curved with a pale oval face and a cascade of dark, wild hair, and she looked no more than twenty-three. Her hands kept rearranging themselves on the strap of her satchel; that and her flitting brown eyes made her look extremely anxious.

"Come in," John said, trying to smile and make her feel welcome, because Sherlock certainly wouldn't.

"I'm sorry I'm a bit late," the young woman said in a high, husky voice, walking over to stand beside the wooden chair in the middle of the room. "It's a long drive from Gloucestershire." She paused awkwardly, then stepped forward to extend a cold hand. "Sorry, I'm Vivian Wright."

John raised himself slightly from his chair to shake it. "Dr. John Watson," he replied. "And this is Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock made no move to shake Vivian's hand, merely inclining his head, so instead she gave him a timid smile. There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

"Well, then," John said to break it, closing his laptop and setting it aside, "what exactly can we do for you, Ms. Wright?"

"Oh, well," Vivian said, sitting down on the chair. "I was a bit conflicted about coming here. I'm sure you get some odd cases, but . . . I'm not sure that this is the kind of odd that you deal with."

John's brow creased. "What do you mean by that?"

Vivian looked like she was suddenly, deeply regretting her decision to come there. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, and then leaned forward. Her hair fell over her eyes. "Dr. Watson, I think – well, my brother thinks – that there's a demonic presence in our town. Something making things happen."

Silence fell again. John looked over at Sherlock, at a loss for words, but Sherlock only met his gaze with an impassive expression. He worked down a swallow and looked back at Vivian. "Ahm . . . demonic – demonic presence?" he repeated, sure that he had misheard her.

But she nodded. "Yes. My brother's convinced that there are strange things going on, and that demons are causing them. I don't know why he would think that there are _demons_ involved, but I can't talk him out of it. His mind's made up."

"What kind of occurrences would make him think that demons were at fault?" Sherlock asked abruptly, walking over to stand beside John. John looked up at him, bewildered. Usually by this time Sherlock would have delivered some nasty comment and sent Vivian Wright out the door without apology. But he actually looked _interested_ – his head was tilted at an angle like a bird's, and his brow was knitted as he listened to her speak – which, John realized, he should be doing as well.

". . . nothing outright paranormal or anything like that," Vivian was saying. "It's a lot of small things that seem strange when you put them all together. Lots of things have gone missing from people's houses that no one can find, livestock is being killed in the fields, and people have been acting out of the ordinary. I don't know how Logan can chalk it up to demons, but–"

"What do you mean, out of the ordinary?" Sherlock inquired, folding his hands behind his back and turning slightly on his heels.

"Well, I can't quite explain it," Vivian said, scraping a handful of tangled hair out of her face. "It's just – well, a lot of people in town have been having affairs and starting relationships where there weren't any before, and people who've always hated each other just suddenly stopped, and people who've always loved each other have too, and a lot of people are making fools of themselves. Doing stupid, humiliating things that they can't remember and they can't explain. It's like everyone's drugged." Vivian's eyes flitted around the room again. "Not everyone, mind you. But many."

John pulled himself up in his seat, waiting for Sherlock to tell Vivian Wright that her case wasn't credible or that they weren't interested, but it didn't happen. Sherlock was leaning against the side of the armchair, watching her intensely. He didn't wear the expression of resigned irritation that he did around most of their other rejected clients. John was bewildered. Why wasn't he saying anything?

After several long moments of quiet, John spoke. "Well, Ms. Wright," he said haltingly, "I'm sorry that you came all this way, but I'm not sure that this particular issue is the sort of thing we–"

"Thank you, Ms. Wright, I think that's all we need to hear," Sherlock interrupted him, walking toward the front door and opening it. "Please email us with your information. We'll be in touch."

Vivian looked slightly startled, but she rose from her chair and walked to the door with a more confident air than she had entered with. "You'll take it?" she asked, turning to regard both John and Sherlock.

"I think it could prove quite interesting," Sherlock said, with that strange quirk of his mouth that was often as close to a smile as he ever got. "Thank you for your time."

Vivian wore a strange mixture of relief, bemusement and triumph on her face. "Thank you, both of you," she said fervently, pushing hair out of her eyes again. "Perhaps you'll put an end to all this. Have a lovely day."

She turned and walked out, and Sherlock closed the door behind her with a deliberate flourish. When he swung back around, he fixed John with a glowing stare that practically emanated satisfaction and excitement. The trembling had reappeared, but it was no longer caused by frustration or disappointment – it was the telltale anticipation of a good new case.

"Would you mind explaining exactly what the hell that was about?" John asked, more than a bit irritated.

Sherlock had begun pacing back and forth across the living room, hands crossed firmly behind his back. "That was getting us a case, John, I would have thought that was clear."

"What on earth possessed you to take a case like that, Sherlock?" John asked helplessly, getting up to go into the kitchen to boil more water for tea. "We could have taken any one of the fourteen from before, any one of them, and you choose the one with no _crime_?"

Sherlock followed him, apparently unfazed by John's lack of enthusiasm. "We needed something exciting, John!" he said insistently. "All the rest were boring as all hell, you know that, what good would they have done us?"

"Well, we'd have gotten _money_," John replied tartly, filling the teakettle with tap water. "How much do you think a few days of chasing after horror stories will get us? And what do you want with a paranormal case, anyway? I thought you didn't believe in all that rubbish."

"No," Sherlock allowed, pulling out a chair and sitting down by the small table. "But we haven't had anything potentially supernatural since Baskerville." He shot John a taunting smirk. "And you'll recall that _that_ was an interesting one."

John gave him an evil stare as he set the kettle on the stove. He wasn't really angry about that anymore, but it had been quite an experience. "As if I'd forget that," he said grudgingly.

"Oh, come on, John!" Sherlock sprang up from his seat again, walking back out into the living room. "She said they thought it was demons! Malevolent spirits! Even if it isn't true, something could be affecting the behavior of the town's population, and something is definitely killing livestock."

"Probably a fox or something like that."

"That isn't the point." Sherlock looked hard at him, cool but earnest. "We don't have to waste our time with trifling little cases. This is finally something out of the ordinary, now what do we have to lose?"

John didn't answer for a long moment, turning the situation over and over in his mind. Yes, the idea of another paranormal case wasn't very appealing; yes, Sherlock was capricious and obstinate about the cases he wanted to take; yes, a case with no evidence and no real crime had little to no hope for solving. And yet, Sherlock's enthusiasm about it was hard to ignore.

And if there was something John heartily did not want to do, it was solve a mystery about missing cufflinks.

"Fine, all right," he answered finally, setting a cup down on the counter and sending a half-heartedly exasperated look toward Sherlock. "We'll go to Gloucestershire tomorrow."

Sherlock gave a short laugh of victory and disappeared into the living room. "Demons, John!"


	2. Chapter 2

((Here it is, at long last! Thank you for being so patient, I've been busy with applications so it's been hard to find time to write. I'll do my best to keep updates routine from now on, especially since I'm so excited for the next couple of chapters, so please bear with me. Enjoy!))

**Chapter Two:**

At eight thirty the next morning, John and Sherlock left for Gloucestershire in a large rental car. John had always hated cramped vehicles, hated the feeling of being pressed in on all sides, but Sherlock couldn't care less. When he was absorbed in his thoughts with nothing to do, there was little that Sherlock couldn't tune out, which meant that most car rides were passed in a more or less comfortable silence.

Overhead was a cold, milky grey, and fine droplets spattered the windshield as they passed town after town and everything slowly turned greener. After more than an hour of winding down the highway, the fog cleared and frost began to creep up the car windows. The towns gave way to woods and fields of weeds and grass, and Sherlock started to shift restlessly in his seat as the turns became more frequent and roads grew narrower.

"Do you feel that?" John asked suddenly, glancing briefly over at Sherlock.

Sherlock seemed to not hear him for several moments, staring at the road, but then stirred and looked up to meet his eyes. "Feel what?" he asked.

"That . . . heavy feeling," John said haltingly, tightening his hands on the wheel. Sherlock must have noticed it. He noticed everything. It wasn't overwhelming, but it felt too odd to overlook – it felt like the air had taken on a mass of its own and settled down around everything. It was like trying to breathe through a cotton mask.

Sherlock leaned forward to look up at the sky through the windshield. His eyes glinted silver as he tilted his head to one side. "It's probably high air pressure from an oncoming storm," he said after a moment, sinking back against the seat. "There are cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon."

John nodded awkwardly, looking back out at the road. Sherlock didn't sound fully convinced of his own explanation, and neither was he, but it wasn't important.

Several minutes later, John and Sherlock finally turned onto the town's main street. A jumble of modern buildings and old whitewashed shops lined the cobbled road, and the cars were few, but it was pleasant, washed in the clear grey light of the late-autumn morning.

John parked outside what looked to be a diner, with purple chrysanthemums blooming in flowerboxes below the windows. He opened the door and got out, pulling his jacket tighter around him as the cold air turned his skin to gooseflesh. His breath streamed between his lips like cigarette smoke as he looked at Sherlock, who was busy turning up his coat collar and appraising the sleepy town around them.

"So are we asking round, then?" John inquired loudly, unsure that Sherlock was paying attention. "See if anyone knows anything?"

Sherlock looked back at him. "Oh, yes, sure," he said, tucking in his scarf with one gloved hand. "Let's try the diner."

. . .

John and Sherlock emerged ten minutes later from the diner, the gust of warmth from inside evaporating in the morning chill. With a cup of steaming coffee in his gloved hands, John looked at Sherlock, squinting in the meager sunlight as breath streamed between his lips like smoke. "Well," he said, "what do you think now, Sherlock? Do we still have a case?"

Sherlock looked at him coolly. Wisps of steam from the coffee clung to the contours of his face, which was pale and drawn in the cold. "Are you suggesting we drop it?"

John sighed. "I don't know, Sherlock," he said, trying to retain his patience, "what do we have to go on? You heard the woman in there – things gone missing, people acting odd, livestock dying. Same as what Vivian Wright told us yesterday. The only new thing is an overabundance of _crows_, and what's that got to do with anything? Is there any scene to investigate? Any evidence to collect, any crime to look into? Come on, Sherlock."

John waited for Sherlock's retort, but there was none. That pulled him up a bit short, made him look at Sherlock a bit closer. His jaw was working and he stared straight ahead, wearing that look of frustration that always appeared whenever someone else's intellect was falling short of his own, when someone else was missing something that he felt was painfully obvious. It was a look John rarely enjoyed seeing, especially when it was directed at him.

"All right, damn it," he said in defeat, rolling his eyes and stalking toward the car. "We'll go talk to Logan Wright. But _after that_, if there still isn't anything to go on–"

"Then I'll defer to your good judgment," Sherlock finished, his voice dripping with only halfhearted sarcasm as he exhaled a cloud of breath into the air like the last pull on a cigarette.

"Someday, Sherlock, you'll actually consider my judgment something of value," John said wryly as Sherlock slid into the passenger seat, wondering how hard he could smash Sherlock's forehead on the dashboard if he really tried – maybe knock some humility into the man.

Sherlock's mouth quirked up on one side, and his eyes flicked back at John for an instant before he leaned forward again to look out the windshield. "Feel free to attempt to impress me any time, Dr. Watson," he said easily, not even needing to look over to see John's exasperation. "The Wright house is over on the hill," he added, and settled back into his seat with satisfaction. "Logan should be awake now, with any luck."

. . .

Five minutes later, John pulled over to the side of the road in front of the Wright house. It was a well-kept mock Tudor structure of considerable size, with ribbons of wisteria that poured off the gables. A lone chicken strutted around the browning front lawn, and no cars were parked in the driveway.

"Have we stopped to consider the possibility that Logan is . . . not all there?" John asked as they got out of the car, the gravel driveway crunching under their feet. "Normal people don't usually go round blaming things on demons. What if we're just wasting our time on someone who's mental?"

"If that is indeed the case, we've wasted our time on worse," Sherlock said, sidestepping the chicken as it skittered past him over the path. "We could be searching for a pair of missing cufflinks eaten by a toddler right now – remember that the next time you think this is absurd."

John decided a response wasn't worth making as they stepped up onto the weathered porch. A wreath of autumn boughs hung on the red painted door, and a pair of old black trainers sat against the railing. John couldn't help but notice that the strange, suffocating sensation he had felt before in the car still hung in the air around the house; it made the world swim slightly and unnervingly at the edges of his vision. He looked at Sherlock, trying to see if he could feel it too, but as usual, there was nothing in Sherlock's expression to give anything away.

When Sherlock reached out to rap twice on the door, it eased open a couple of inches, unlocked and ajar. As they waited, a small grey cat slipped through the crack and slunk past them, mewling quietly.

After half a minute or so of silence, John looked up at Sherlock. "Maybe he's out of the house," he suggested, and Sherlock scowled slightly. "Vivian did say he–"

Cutting him off, the door creaked again as pale fingers curled around the edge to pull it farther open. It revealed a bird-boned boy of about seventeen, with thin lips and a mop of dark hair that fell over his brown eyes.

"Can I help you?" the boy asked in the same timid voice as his sister, shifting on his feet.

"Logan Wright?" Sherlock said briskly, leaning in with subconscious anticipation.

"Ah . . . yeah," the boy said, glancing back over his shoulder, "yeah, I'm Logan. And you–"

"Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson," Sherlock answered, and John reflexively reached out to shake Logan's hand. "Your sister contacted us yesterday in regards to . . . your thoughts on recent local occurrences."

Logan's eyes widened, and his face went a shade or two paler. It accentuated the bruiselike half-circles under his eyes, making him look rather ill. John wondered if the boy was actually sick, or if it was suspicion that had eaten away at him over the weeks. He wondered how long it would take for Sherlock to work Logan out. The boy seemed timorous, transparent – no match at all for Sherlock's powers of deduction. He wouldn't have a thing to hide that would stay hidden.

If there was any real sort of case to be had, John reassured himself, they would know in no time.

"She talked to you about it?" Logan asked, sounding dumbfounded. He leaned against the doorframe, and in a moment the little cat was back, winding itself around his bare ankles. "Why would she do that?"

"Perhaps you could enlighten us in that vein," Sherlock said tersely, as he unwound his scarf. "May we come in?"

"Oh – yeah, of course, sorry," Logan said, standing aside and holding the door open for them to enter. He seemed to do everything as though it had just woken him from some reverie – in some ways, John had to admit, like Sherlock often did. They were both, for whatever reasons, enveloped in the recesses of their own thoughts, and both similarly off-putting.

Maybe they would finally learn the reality of Logan's thoughts, mad or not, and put an end to this shambles of a case once and for all.

John, ironically, was stirred from his own thoughts by Sherlock gently prodding his shoulder. He glanced up, seeing Logan Wright disappear into the shadows of his home, and then at Sherlock.

"After you," Sherlock said in a low voice, and John stepped over the threshold into the house.


	3. Chapter 3

((Nothing much to add - just a thank you for the kindness and support. I'll do my best to return the favor, and reviews are always welcome. Enjoy!))

**Chapter Three:**

Inside the house was cool and dark, all wood paneling and floral wallpaper. Logan led them mutely through a dining room, with photo albums scattered on the table and pressed flowers hanging in frames on the walls, into the small kitchen. "Can I get you a cup of tea?" Logan asked, leaning against the counter and looking a bit ill at ease.

"No, thank you, we're fine," John said as Sherlock came to stand beside him. "Do you want to sit down, then, if we're going to discuss this?"

They sat in the den through the folding wooden doors, where early light streamed through the windows and dog-eared magazines were strewn over the carpet. Logan perched nervously on the overstuffed armchair with a cup of tea balanced on his knee, and John and Sherlock faced him on the sofa, a worn drop-leaf table between them.

"Do your parents work nearby?" John asked. He wanted to ease into the conversation; Logan didn't at all seem to be the outgoing type, and he didn't want to scare him away from giving them answers.

"My mum owns a florist's shop in town . . . and my dad died when I was thirteen. Car accident."

"We're sorry to hear that," John said, and he meant it. He was good at compartmentalization when it came to cases – as a former military man, it had become all but second nature – but he had never been able to shield the pang of grief he felt when he heard about children losing parents. And though Sherlock never let on, John knew that it bothered him, too.

"Thanks," Logan said, in somewhat rote fashion. "It's all right, though. He was a mean drunk."

An awkward silence fell after that. "So tell us," Sherlock said suddenly, shifting forward in his seat, "what exactly has got you convinced that your town has a demon roaming the streets?"

Logan looked up, apparently startled by Sherlock's straightforwardness. "Didn't Vivian tell you?"

"Well, she gave us an overview," John said, folding his hands around his cup of coffee, "but not anything really . . . specific." It seemed better than _convincing_, which was his first choice of words. "She said it was a culmination of small incidents that you thought were . . . a bit out of the ordinary. People acting odd, things going missing . . ." He looked at Logan for affirmation. "Sound familiar?"

Logan nodded, working down a swallow. "Ahm, yeah. But I mean – it's more than that. We're a small town. It's calm around here, everyone knows everyone else. People don't steal from each other or screw each other's husbands and wives." He swallowed again, looking like he was having trouble putting his thoughts into words. "Things are wrong. I can't explain exactly why. People aren't acting like they normally do, it's like they're under a spell or something. Animals are dying in the fields. And . . ." He glanced up at John. "You've felt it, haven't you? The heaviness over everything, like something's pushing down on you?"

John faltered over his words for a moment. "Well – I – yes, I've noticed that. And it is strange. But why would it lead you to believe that something supernatural is going on around here?"

Logan rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "Well, I . . ." he began, but then trailed off.

"So why exactly _do_ you think this is the work of a demon?" Sherlock asked shortly, and Logan's mouth clamped shut. "And why does it deserve our attention?"

Logan's lips moved, but the only sound that came out was a nervous stuttering. "I – I – I don't know how I know," he said lamely, his eyes beginning to flit anxiously around the room, "but I do, Mr. Holmes. I'm sure of it. Please, you have to–"

"Oh, but you see, we don't," Sherlock said with mock patience, as John stared at him in bewilderment. Sherlock had gone from uncompromising investigator to cynic in a matter of minutes, and John couldn't tell whether or not he was playing the part solely for Logan's benefit. "Precisely what reason do we have to believe you? I'm assuming you can appreciate how absurd this sounds, otherwise you would have come to us yourself. So what makes you so certain?"

Logan's lips were pressed together, his fingers curled tightly around the cup. "I know it sounds mad," he said, almost inaudibly. "If someone told me that I'd say the same thing. But I'm telling you the truth, I swear to God. You have to believe me."

"Mr. Wright, with all due respect," Sherlock said in a tone that implied the contrary, "your story falls a bit short of believable. You seem to be the only person who's made the connection between these incidents and the occult, with no explanation as to why. And seeing as how your current mental state might contribute to you being less than truthful–"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Logan demanded, his voice rising above a murmur for the first time. An angry splotch of red had appeared high on each of his cheeks. John felt a twinge of pity for the boy. _Here it comes_, he thought.

Sherlock rose from his seat on the couch as Logan and John watched him, both equally baffled. "Well, for starters, you're on medication for manic depressive disorder, and you've been seeing a psychiatrist for your chronic anxiety. Probably not coinciding well with your marijuana habit, I'm guessing." The corner of Sherlock's mouth lifted imperceptibly. "You have burn marks and tar stains on the pads of your left thumb and forefinger," he said in reply to the indignant expression on Logan's face. "Happens from smoking to the end of a joint without a clip."

He turned to walk behind the couch, leaning his elbows against the back like a professor at a podium. "Both of those things on their own can generate hallucinations or delusions of varying vividness, of which I'm sure you're aware. But together, and adding your fixation on horror–" Sherlock made a sweeping gesture at the piles of magazines on the carpet, issues of _Midnight Street_, _Apex_, _Black Static_, "–it isn't extraordinarily difficult to see where you could have gotten such an inventive story."

Sherlock's piercing blue-green eyes leveled a hard stare at Logan. "So precisely how sure are you that you want to persist this?"

Logan shot to his feet, jaw and fists clenched. He looked back and forth between Sherlock and John, anger and desperation filling his face with an intensity that was almost startling.

"I didn't have to talk to you, you know," he said, in a voice low and trembling with emotion. "I could have slammed the door in your faces as soon as you came here, but I didn't." He took a deep breath. "_There is something here_," he insisted, looking to John with imploring eyes. "I know it, I swear to you that I'm telling you the truth. I can't – I can't tell you how I know, but I do, and _you need to help me_."

"What can we possibly do?" John asked, speaking for the first time in several minutes. He felt as though he was rehashing the same argument he had had with Sherlock the day before, futilely playing the logician. "You're asking us to fight something that no one's seen, going on nothing but your word. I'm sorry, but this – this isn't our area of expertise, Logan. We're in crime, not . . . paranormal investigation. I don't think we can offer you the kind of help you–"

"Yes, you can," Logan said, desperation creeping into his voice. John could see the boy's legs shaking, and his throat was working like he was trying to repress tears. "I know you can. I've heard about you, read about you; you can solve anything." He looked around the room, casting about for something more to say. "Just – go look at the cow they found in the grazing field up by the woods. It's the fourth one they've found dead in the last two weeks. If you don't think it means that something's wrong, or out of the ordinary, then . . . you can leave. I won't try to stop you."

John's brow knitted. "Why the cow? What happened to it?"

"Just go look," Logan repeated, lifting a hand to bite at his nail. John noticed the burn mark on his thumb that Sherlock had pointed out. "I saw it. It wasn't normal. Neither were the others." He was quiet for a long moment, letting his eyes drift to the floor. "Have you noticed the crows?" he asked, looking abruptly distant.

"The crows?" Sherlock said, frowning slightly. "Yes, the woman in the diner mentioned something about a recent overabundance of crows, what of it?"

"They've been all over the place. I think they've got something to do with it. They . . ." He shook his head, shuddering visibly. "Just go see for yourself. Please. That's all I'm asking."

John looked at Sherlock to see what he could be thinking. At this point, he knew how this would play out whether he liked it or not. Sherlock's eyes were almond-shaped, slitted with thoughtfulness, and his long, slim fingers played with the seam along the back of the couch. "You do of course realize that this makes no sense at all?" he said, looking up at Logan with a lifted eyebrow and a not unfriendly expression on his face.

Logan nodded weakly. "I know," he said simply, letting out a long breath. "But there's nothing else I can do."

. . .

The car shuddered violently as it pulled to a stop along the meandering gravel road. They were on the fringe of the town, where houses gave way to straggled farms and the grazing fields stretched up into woods.

John got out of the car, which was perched precariously on the edge of the sodden gutter, while Sherlock picked his way up to stand on the grass, still glittering with morning frost. The cold was bitter.

Sherlock turned on his heel and surveyed the field with a hand shielding his eyes from the glare. "He's over there, beside the tree," he replied, pointing, and John looked to see a stout man walking toward them over the grass, waving, with a small girl at his side.

"Morning," John called, setting off in their direction with Sherlock beside him. "Mr. Ossining?"

"Yeah, pleasure to meet you," the man said huskily, stopping once they came face to face. "Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes?"

"Yes, sir," John replied, shaking the man's hand. "Thank you for coming out here."

"Not at all," Ossining said, gesturing to the large, unmoving mound about thirty feet away as they started back toward it. "I'm just as interested to know what the hell's killing my stock. It's the fourth one in the last couple of weeks, you know."

"So we've heard," said Sherlock, the hem of his coat sweeping over the grass as they trudged. "When did you find the carcass?"

"Hannah did, actually," Ossining answered, patting the small girl's shoulder. "Friday morning, when she was playing with her brother. Wasn't a pretty sight, either."

Looking at Sherlock as they reached the cow's carcass, John could see the almost predatory shift in his posture as the evidence was presented, the intensification of the calculating look in his eyes. It was always mesmerizing to watch; John stood back beside Ossining and his daughter to let Sherlock enter his element.

Sherlock crouched down behind the great heap of deceased animal, tilting his head from one side to the other. "Dead about . . . sixty hours," John heard him say, bent over the corpse. There was the snap of latex gloves. "Around midnight on Thursday. It fought for about ten minutes, then collapsed on its left side."

"Fought? Fought what?" Ossining asked before John could do the same, eyeing Sherlock uncomfortably. "How could he know that?"

"Dr. Watson, would you join me a moment?" Sherlock said, raising his head to regard them and ignore Ossining's question completely. Stray curls of dark hair obscured his eyes, lifted by the slight breeze, and he pushed them back impatiently to bow over the carcass again.

John made brief, apologetic eye contact with Ossining before striding over, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the smell of putrefying flesh, and sitting back on his haunches beside Sherlock. "What is it?" he asked, not really wanting to look too long at the carcass. It was truly an unpleasant sight – the pure black-and-white hide of the beast was mottled with dirt, bruises and the swollen blues and purples of decay. Its belly was torn open, the edges ragged and stained red, and the ground around it was dark and sticky with dried blood. The innards were all but gone from inside the ribcage, and its body was covered with shallow gouges John had never seen before.

Sherlock laid a hand against the hollow underside of the cow, and stared at John. "What does this look like to you?" he asked seriously.

"What does it . . ." John grimaced, trying to study the corpse with the same detached, analytical gaze that Sherlock had. "It looks like claw marks."

"Good. Talon marks," Sherlock said, with a strange underlying tone of enthusiasm in his voice. "From crows."

John stared at him. "_Crows?_"

Sherlock nodded, sliding his gloved fingers through the bloody mess under the carcass. "_Corvus corone_. Carrion crows. Indigenous to western Europe and eastern Asia."

John shook his head, looking at the hundreds of grouped, parallel slashes that covered the hide. "How many crows could have done this?" he asked.

"At least twenty," Sherlock replied, straightening up and pulling off his gloves, "up to thirty."

John stood up with Sherlock, folding his arms. "So that's what Logan was talking about," he said in a cloud of steaming breath. "When he said it was out of the ordinary. It is a hell of a lot of crows to be feeding on one carcass, but–"

"Oh, they weren't just feeding on it," Sherlock said, sounding almost pleased. "They were what killed it."

"What?" Ossining looked incredulous. "That's not possible. Crows don't attack cows."

"True, yes, but that's what happened here."

Ossining looked down at his daughter. "Hannah, go back and clean your room," he said quietly, giving her a little nudge; after giving John and Sherlock a guarded look, the small girl turned and ran off toward a whitewashed house in the distance. Ossining watched her go, then rounded on John and Sherlock. "How could you possibly know that?" he demanded. "How do you know they didn't come to pick over it after it died?"

Sherlock walked out from behind the carcass, indicating the long, erratic scratches that scored its back. "The birds attacked first from above," he said, drawing a line from the cloudy sky down to the cow, "aiming for the back, head and eyes. They're exceedingly intelligent creatures. There are numerous scuff marks in the ground, showing that the animal attempted to escape, but as more crows arrived and targeted areas like the throat and underbelly, it went into hypovolemic shock and the birds drove it to the ground. After it was dead, they tore into the abdominal cavity and–"

"All right, all right. The rest we know." John suppressed a pang of nausea and shoved a hand back through his hair. "And you're sure it couldn't have been anything else? Sickness, cold, a bigger animal . . ."

Sherlock shook his head, looking up at the sky. "Temperatures aren't low enough to cause organ failure. And if the crows had found it already dead, there wouldn't be so many aggressive wounds. I'm sure of it."

He turned around, staring with narrowed eyes at the clump of weeds and twisted sumac trees that stood nearby. "Why would they take down such a large animal?" he said curiously, apparently to himself. "There are squirrels, rabbits, mice, and they don't usually hunt in groups this size . . ."

John walked over to stand behind Sherlock's shoulder, following his gaze to try and see what he was looking at. A great nest, almost two feet in diameter and fashioned out of branches and bits of fluffy white down, sat at the crown of the tallest tree; as John watched, there was a flutter of movement, and an oil-black bird unfolded itself to glare down at them. It ruffled its glossy feathers, blinking ice-blue eyes, and let out a raucous caw.

It was an unsettling sound, and John leaned toward Sherlock without removing his eyes from the enormous crow. "Is this strange, Sherlock?" he asked in a low voice.

Sherlock's gaze didn't waver either, but after a moment he answered, "It very well may be."


End file.
